Ino
by The Wise Dumpling
Summary: I was born in a ship floating in space from Kingdom Hearts' womb. I can't remember what I was before. I have to know what I was. People tell me that it'll tear me apart if I do. Maybe it will. Maybe for the best. AU
1. 1

**exploring an alternate ending to KHII. Don't worry, it's only the beginning that's depressing.**

Kairi often told her that the islands had once been beautiful.

Inō lay on her back and stared at the blackened amalgams, death-still, colorless, barely visible against the ink of space, and she could not force herself to imagine them as beautiful.

But of course, Kairi always told her that every one of those black clumps had once been beautiful, as they lay staring up through the glass ceiling of Sora's gummi ship at the sprightly lights of the few worlds that had not been heartbroken - she just became especially impassioned when she talked about Destiny Islands. Her once-home. The black clumps welcomed nothing except the darkness now.

Kairi's eyes would glisten when she talked about the islands and she would become animated, pacing about the floor and swinging her arms in an exaggerated facade of happy memories - at first Inō thought the islands were just that wonderful. Then she realized after the first few times that the motions were just to hide her bitterness, and the glistening in her eyes were angry tears. As she traipsed around the pilot room to hide her sadness, Kairi would reminisce.

She held Inō's hands in her tired ones and told her about Sand and about Ocean and about Tree, and about Riku and Sora. She talked about the raft that they had built when they were kids, how Riku and Sora had fought over who would share a paopu fruit with her, how they would all wait out the melting sunsets on the bent paopu tree while they dreamed about going out to visit the other worlds. How she had given her charm to Sora before the earth split between them and she made him promise to bring it back. She didn't tell her about the months she waited for Sora and Riku to come back home, and how the islands had been claimed by the darkness a second time before they could come back.

Now she had had her fill of wanderlust. Now she just wanted to go home. But the prodigal daughter returned to find nothing - her family had moved, the house was in tatters. Darkness had taken everything.

She wanted to go home.

Kairi never said it out loud - she was too sweet for that, she wouldn't want to make Inō a cynic. She was too selfless for her own good, and she would never indulge herself in the sadness that she so longed to vent to anybody other than Inō - Instead she would spend every day living with the motherly mask on, Kairi who was seventeen and Inō's age, trying to singlehandedly raise a girl who had been born into the universe as an empty husk, waiting to be filled with ideals.

But Inō saw. She had been born an empty husk - a girl who had been in Kingdom Hearts' womb for seventeen years instead of one inside her mother's - but the fleeting

nothings

in the back of her mind - perhaps Inō had once lived a lie as well - told her that Kairi was not just reminiscing about old happy memories. She wanted to reach out to her, but how could a husk that had been born in a ship floating in space possibly provide human comfort?

Scraping metal, then dragging footsteps. A pause. Inō heard Kairi sink onto the floor next to her, then felt her hand grasp hers awkwardly but as motherly as possible.

Inō felt the fatigue emanating from her side. The complete lack of desire to advance. It felt familiar. It was painful for her. It must be painful to Kairi.

What did Inō say at this point? What did you like most about the destiny islands? She had already told her a thousand times: being with Sora. Tell me more about Riku and Sora? They were gone, they had gone into the realm of darkness and never come back. How am I supposed to make her feel better? Where was I supposed to learn this? Why don't the nothings tell me anything?

Inō opened her mouth.

"The worlds that are still there - what are they like?"

Kairi laughed and indulged her. The fatigue lingered like a Shadow.


	2. 2

**Feedback pls. Should I maintain third-person, or switch to first?**

_Taste that is difficult to describe. Cold - well, all ice cream is cold. Pungent yet mild. Like the reek of a low tide except sweeter. __How do I know what a low tide smells like? __And why is this salty? _

_She must be making a weird face, because he shakes with amusement and takes it back from her. She had asked for a taste. "It takes a bit to get used to," he says. "Kind of like wielding the_

Pain. Signals screaming across nerve endings, ice and fire spilling out of her skin, the head splitting from the overload of sensation. This was familiar. But the pain that she had felt before was distant, more of a variable to take into account - nothing had prepared her for _this_. It felt like fissures down her bottom half were tearing her open and scalding water was rushing in and she couldn't fathom how her nerves could contain so much pain.

"Kairi!" She screamed. Inō forced open her eyes, heaving from the burning in her legs. She was on her back. The metal floor and walls were contorted, and fire blazed out of the gaps in between the shattered metal. Busted alarm bells screeched from the corridor. An overwhelming weight crushed her burning half into the floor - the door, blown off its frame. Panic. Good half was unable to move. Agony ground against her legs. "Kairi!" she screamed. No answer.

The ship was wailing with a hideous aria of crunching metal and broken alarms. A deafening explosion. An impact that seemed to come from everywhere at once crashed into her body. Through her legs. She was too shocked to scream. The door was thrown off - straight up - then brought itself back down on her, and she heard a symphony of crunches. This time she found her voice and tore her throat, she was shrieking so hard. "Kairi, Kairi!" She was sobbing now. She felt an unfamiliar ringing fear in the pit of her stomach. Please god, where was Kairi? Where had she been when the explosion hit?

She could feel herself breaking and the pain began to turn to deep cold. She worked her mouth to call out again and she felt the air leaving her, but she couldn't tell whether it made sound or not. she was going to die here going to die going to die again, she felt so cold, she felt weightless, her vision flashed warm colors.

Another impact rocked the room, and this one sent her mind spiraling into pieces. All her senses felt fragmented. She tasted the ship's fires intense on her body. Her vision frayed - she saw through the floor, she could see into the back of her head. She felt as if she were falling through the floor without weight. If this was dying, the feeling was familiar. The terror and the anguish were not.

Then she saw a Shadow crawl out of a crack in the wall. Heartless. Brilliant. The ship had been brought down by Heartless. Her first time seeing one up close - they looked less threatening than she'd imagined. The black monster moved closer to her with the twitches and spasms of a heart without a soul, and more seeped out of the wreckage behind it. It occurred to her that she should be fearing for her life.

Why did it feel so sickeningly familiar?

Something snapped her consciousness back. Life, and with it pain, rushed back to her head and she spasmed and gasped for air as sensation returned to her all at once, accompanied this time by a new, tormenting throbbing behind her eyes.

This had happened before, she realized as her senses pieced themselves together again. The Heartless - she had fought them before. She was in a trance of pain and memory; the nothings in her head were firing ancient instincts in her brain, prompting her limbs to move, screaming at her to take action while they pumped fresh adrenaline through her muscles. The Heartless swarmed around her, forming a ring of writhing black masses, waiting for the right time to attack. She realized she had raised her arms into some sort of formation - what was she doing? Was it a combat stance? Inō shook her throbbing head and she tried not to think, terrified that she would shut off the instincts controlling her. The Shadows darted closer. Her muscles and mind seized on their own, and Inō was assaulted by a torrent of memory.

You summon it like this. You reach into the recesses of your mind - you have to go far enough, and soon you'll reach a place that you feel like you might lose yourself in. Reach into there, concentrate - it'll come to you.

It'll come to you. She felt as if she was ripping an organ from the back of her mind. She felt a searing in her right hand, then a blinding light. The pain in her legs made her sharp. The nothings screamed at her from every direction. The instincts told her to swing. The first Shadow reached her, tearing open a new burning pain in her side. Darkness hates light. Muscle memory wakens to guide a reckless slash to its target.

This feels too familiar.

**Review, please! feedback will be wholly taken into account and be considered in later chapters.**


	3. 3

**Straight back into it. You're in Kairi's point of view for this one.**

Inō. She had to find Inō. Kairi hobbled forward in rhythm to the splitting alarms, using Destiny's Embrace as a support. Sickening worry overpowered the pain in her arm. She'd seen Inō dozing in the observatory a while before the Heartless had invaded the ship - was she still there? what if they had gotten to her? Inō had never seen a Heartless in her life, and Kairi cursed herself for not teaching her in detail about them. Her arm was burning and her head was faint, and she didn't know how to use Cure and she had already used so much magic that she felt one more spell would make her pass out. Sora could have taught her. She was so weak, she couldn't even fight off a couple of Shadows. What good could the Keyblade do if its wielder was so useless?

She sucked in and winced as she brushed the wall with her bad arm. The ship had stopped quaking, thank god - and the Heartless seemed to have miraculously disappeared. One moment she was fighting them, cornered and about to be done for, when they all just stopped, twitched and vanished into dark corridors. Like something had scared them off.

She heard a noise in between the screeching alarms. She jumped. Were the Heartless still onboard? The noise came again. No, it wasn't Heartless - it was a voice - a scream. Kairi quickened her pace to match her heartbeat, hobbling as quickly as she could. The scream came louder.

"Kairi!" undoubtedly Inō's voice. Kairi's heart leapt forward and the pain momentarily left her as she broke into a run. "Inō!" Her voice cracked in relief. "I'm here, I'm here! Where are you?! Did they get you?!"

"Yes, and I'm in the observatory!" Inō shouted. Her voice was faint and strained with pain.

"I'm almost there!" Kairi turned the corner and faltered. The observatory door was gone, the frame bent and charred. Blackened skid marks arced their way to the middle of the room. Something had hit the door with enough force to throw it several feet - and pin down Inō, who was heaving in pain, bleeding from her side, but miraculously still alive.

And holding a blade in her right hand.

Kairi stared. The crystal hilt set nestled in the arched white bow, the tapered teeth set into the wreathed shank - angular, alien but distinct through feeling - Inō was holding a keyblade.

But it was unlike any other that Kairi had ever seen. It was soft white and the shank diverged into delicate white threads along its length, blossoming into the crystalline bit at the end of the blade and an angelic guard at the hilt. It looked like a peacetime gift, not a weapon for killing heartless. She could feel it, even though she stood feet away, pulse and shiver as if it were alive; an otherworldly current that was both chilling and warming and that seemed to come from all sides but at the same time flowed undoubtedly from the keyblade, humming straight through her and slipping into her mind fleeting images of bliss and melancholy, furtiveness. wistfulness.

Nostalgia. Old pain and happiness alike. Something let slip in Kairi's mind. The keyblade stared into her soul.

Sora stood in front of her, raising his eyelids as if from a coma - but the eyes themselves were bright and alert. Kairi stood motionless and locked with his brilliant gaze for a while, letting herself drink in his company to make up for the lost absence. She raised Destiny's Embrace with a limp hand and pressed it into Sora's. She felt warmth in his palms. This was real. She grasped a little tighter. Do you still have my charm? A smile faded into Sora's face and he nodded slightly.

"Kairi. Kairi," Inō's breathing came ragged and uneven. "Please...help-"

Kairi's head slowly cleared. The alarm bells slowly faded back into her ears - she hadn't realized they had gone. Destiny's embrace had disappeared and in its place she clutched Sora's kingdom key pendant, the one she always saw around his neck. She walked over to where the door had fallen on Inō and knelt down. "Help me get this off. You're going to be okay -" She wrapped both hands around the edge of the metal and Inō, with shaky breaths, brought her keyblade around to brace against the brunt of the door. Her breath shortened and quickened. The ship wailed. They pushed. Inō screamed. The girl's body started trembling violently with the strain of all her muscles and her face was contorted in pain, tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes.

"Keep pushing!" Kairi begged her, sweat beading on her forehead. "It's almost off!" Inō jerked her head back and screamed through clenched teeth and the metal door finally fell from flesh to floor with a dull thud. The energy escaped from Kairi's legs and she slumped to her knees, drenched with sweat and panting. Inō relented her muscles and slackened herself, wheezing. Blood that had been held in by the door swiftly started pooling around her crushed legs like a red blossom.

She would die of blood loss at this rate. Kairi moved closer and laid a hand on Inō's beautiful keyblade. "I'll be borrowing this for a second," she whispered through the screaming alarms. Inō just stared at her pleadingly through shallow breaths, dead man's grip on the hilt as if it were the edge of a cliff. Her eyes questioned Kairi desperately through a haze of pain. They were filled with questions even at the brink of death - why did the Heartless attack. What am I holding. Why does this hurt so much. Kairi's heart wrenched and she looked back at Inō with pleading. I'm so sorry. I'll explain everything. I promise.

Inō didn't break her stare, but her grip on the keyblade loosened and she drew her breaths with more security. Thank you, Kairi mouthed, and gently pried the weapon out of her hands. The blade did feel vibrantly alive; it seemed to recoil when fingers made contact with the hilt, as if timid, sent cold and hot shivers up Kairi's arm when she picked it up. She closed her eyes and let herself slip back into the recesses of her mind to reach the rivulets of magic running through the space around them. She knew which one to pick and what it would do - she had seen it when she touched Sora's hand.

It's the one that flows in instead of out and splits into a million channels in the middle. Your mind will color it green. Grasp it - not too gently, then it'll freeze up, but not too hard that you hurt it. Picture it running from the air to your arm.

"Curaga-" Green lights sprang silently forward from the shank, communing and thronging like fireflies. Kairi let out her breath in both disbelief and relief as the lights piled themselves into Inō's wounds and seeped into her blood to reverse the flow of hurt. Inō's face shifted from panic to peaceful, her pain-taut features relaxing and her eyes drooping shut. Her breathing returned to a normal pace. The keyblade dissolved itself into light.

Kairi relaxed. The crisis was over. Diverted by her own hand. Who would've thought. Exhaustion came over her. She dragged herself and Inō to the side of the room, and slumped against the broken wall, cradling Inō's head in her arms.

She smiled. She had seen Sora today. He had undoubtedly stood before her, and she had touched his hand, and he had shown her how to save Inō. He was alive, and if he was Riku was too - she felt it with the same certainty that had shown her Sora's Heartless. Tears of joy fell from her chin and onto Inō's cheeks. They were still fighting - they just couldn't get home yet. Why did I ever doubt them?

**phew. Again, feedback will be considered seriously and implemented! I feel like a lot of the time my writing feels severely monotonous - complete lack of sentence variety and as a consequence painful to read - and I would greatly appreciate some pointers to fix it.**


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